Category Archives: Language

Post navigation

Earlier this evening, shortly after the curfew took effect, I stood at the back gate of my home in Baltimore City. If I opened the gate and took a step onto the street, I would be breaking the law. I felt a great need to express my sadness over what has become of my adopted home. Here it is:

I just secured my first online teaching job. I’m partnering with TutorUniverse (http:/www.tutoruniverse.com) to provide tutoring at primary, secondary, college, and adult education levels. The areas I’m providing service in are a broad spectrum of disciplines to include information technology, writing, academic paper preparation, Bible, and Theology. TutorUniverse’s interactive virtual classroom is state of the art. The fee is hourly and the prices are very reasonable. Once you sign up, you can specify me by searching for my full name.

This approach to teaching is in concert with my post-grad research in Competency-Based Training. Instead of conducting time-boxed classes where the goal is to finish and get a grade, I’ll be working one-on-one with distance learners that desire to develop competency in areas where they are lacking. We will be done when they have developed the competency needed to do their jobs or succeed in school. I am looking forward to working with a broad spectrum of students including home-schoolers.

Elvis Presley was known for many things including a peanut butter, bacon, and banana sandwich. I just made a kosher version of it. Take two slices of challah, a healthy schmear of peanut butter, three strips of bacon, cut off the tip of the banana, and feel guilty for eating it.

If you are a Jew, you can skip to the second paragraph. For the goyim (gentiles) reading this, Sukkos (or Sukkot) is a Jewish Holy Festival where we build and then take our meals in a temporary sukka (or booth) in obedience to the command of G-d in Leviticus 23. We do this to remember how our ancestors lived in temporary booths in the years following the Egyptian captivity. You’ll find it mentioned in the Christian scriptures in John 7 as the “Feast of Tabernacles.” On 15 Tishrei (late September/early October) we start the seven-day festival. With your introduction to Judaism freshly learned, you may be able to appreciate the brief tale that follows.

I have a funny, if not somewhat sad tale of my first Sukkos away from home. I was a freshman at Rutgers University. I went to the Newark campus which was for commuters only. Newark, NJ, like many big cities, is mostly paved. A few Jewish students and I tried to erect a sukka in the Rutgers quadrangle without the benefit of soil to stake it in or trees to tie it to. As fate would have it, Sukkos started on a very windy day so our sukka did not survive. I have to wonder if G-d looked down and said, “what schmucks, they don’t even plan to build a proper sukka,” or if He said, “such faith and commitment these kids have, believing that an untethered sukka could stand on a windy day.”